by JA Huss
“Hey,” he says, taking a step towards me. “It’s OK.”
“No. Nothing about what we’re doing is OK. None of it. I’m doing this out of revenge. I’ve turned you into my submissive and that’s not how it’s done! Don’t you get it? I can’t make you be a sub, Pierce. No one can just become submissive. Either she is one, or she isn’t!”
“She?” he says.
“He. You,” I say, wanting to stab myself in the eye for that little slip-up.
“Uh… what are we talking about?”
“You,” I say. “Me.” And then it’s out. And I regret that immediately. So I turn away and say, “You need to leave. Now. This is over.”
“No,” he says. “This isn’t over. And I’m not leaving until I understand what just happened.”
“I just told you. I’m doing this for all the wrong reasons. This… lifestyle. It’s not a joke, Pierce.”
“I didn’t mean to treat it that way, Myrtle. I swear. I’m just… I was just trying to make you happy.”
“It’s not you, don’t you see? It’s me.”
“It’s not you, it’s me?” He chuckles. “Uh, well, I’ve heard that plenty of times in my life but it’s never rung true before and it’s not ringing true now either. So just what the hell is going on?”
I shake my head and turn away from him. “Just go. Please.”
I don’t know what he does then. He doesn’t leave. Just stands behind me, quiet. Seconds tick off in silence and then he brushes past me and walks over to a picture hanging in the hallway. “Who’s this? Your father?”
I stare at the picture. It’s old. Very old. The years have changed the black and white to a dull sepia color. “No, my grandfather.”
“Rangy Ron, Wild Beast Whisperer,” Pierce says, chuckling as he reads the sign over my grandfather in the picture. He’s a tall, thin man surrounded by lions, wearing the classic lion-tamer circus costume, whip in one hand, outstretched chair in the other. “Nice. He looks… formidable.”
“He was,” I say, some of the tension I’ve built up in this room leveling off.
“And this one?” Pierce asks, pointing to the next picture on the wall. “This is your dad?”
I smile as I step closer to look at the photo. Because I walk past it every day on my way out of the house but I can’t remember the last time I actually stopped to look at it. “Yeah,” I say. “He was about seven, I guess. That’s when he started working with the cats.”
“How old were you?”
“Me? No. I don’t work with them. I just…” I shrug. “Hang out with them, I guess. When I was growing up it made me sad to see them working. I didn’t like it. My father would take me on set when he was training them for movies and I’d watch him. Whole summers, sometimes. But I never wanted to make them do things.”
Our eyes meet. I look away first.
“I mean, I never wanted to train them. I just wanted to know them. They were like friends to me when I was a kid.” I chance a look up at Pierce and he’s nodding.
“OK,” he says.
“I didn’t have a lot of friends as a child.”
He squints his eyes at me. “Honestly, I can’t even picture that. You’re so… intriguing.”
“Not back then I wasn’t.”
“No? What were you like?”
I suck in a deep breath, so uncomfortable talking about this stuff.
“Were you… quiet?” he asks.
I nod. “Very.”
“And shy?”
“Right again.”
“Did you read a lot?” When I look up at him this time, he’s smiling. So I look away and don’t answer. “I did,” he says. “I mean, probably not a lot. But enough. I was a little quiet at times too.”
I chuckle, can’t help it. “You? Quiet? Ha. Nice try, but I’m not falling for the old we’re-the-same routine. I picture you in your royal sailor suit”—he guffaws—“running around expansive green lawns trimmed so well you could bowl on them, smacking things with a croquet mallet.”
“Close.” He laughs. “But I was… an outsider, I guess. Too much of everything. Too loud one minute. Too quiet the next. Too tall, too skinny, too smart, too hungry, too satisfied. All the toos. That was me.” He moves to the next picture and I inch along with him. It’s of me. Sitting on the back of a lion holding a balloon. “I was all the toos. This is you, right?” I nod. “How old?”
“Mmmm… four, I guess.”
“Were you ever afraid of them?”
“I was too small and too innocent to be afraid.”
“So we have something in common then.”
“What?”
“You were all the toos too.” He smiles at me. And then his smile falters and he’s frowning. “I’m here because I wanted to come. And you did promise me a reward.”
“We’re not going back down there and that’s the end of it.”
He inches closer to me. I glance down as he places his hand on my hips, fingertips spread out across the light blue silk jacquard pattern. His chest presses up to my back and his head dips down until his mouth is on my neck. “We could just… stay right here, if you want.”
My eyes dart to the little girl in the photo in front of me. And I wonder, not for the first time in my life, just what the hell I’m doing.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - PIERCE
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“I dunno,” I reply. I feel a twinge of guilt, lying to her. But it doesn’t matter. Because we both know what I’m doing. It is of no consequence whether I admit it or not.
“Why?” she asks.
I maneuver her around to face me. Corseted and tall and lithe, as she turns she calls to mind one of those music boxes with the ballerinas that spin in a perfect pirouette. Ceramic or porcelain or whatever they are. Beautiful and ever there when you summon them to dance.
“Why what?” I ask once her eyes are in front of mine.
“Why me?”
I have to cock my head because my neck kind of gives way. I was not expecting that to be her response. The Myrtle I know has never questioned herself. Never once. At least not as far as I know. But hell. What do I know anyway?
“Why you?” She nods. I blow out a breath. “Well, I mean, look. I think, after Andrew, you represent my most enduring adult relationship. Also, you’re the most reliable and trustworthy person I’ve ever met.”
She starts to make a point. I anticipate it even before the words are out of her mouth.
“I know! I know! I accused you of something that belies what I just said. Listen. Listen to me.” I take her by the shoulders. “Are you listening to me?”
She nods. “Do you think holding my shoulders will make me listen harder?”
“No.”
“It won’t. ”
“I know.”
“I listen with my ears, not my shoulders, so—”
“Will you shut the fuck up and stop deflecting for a second?”
She pulls her chin into her chest.
I start again. “Listen to me. I—”
“You don’t have to yell.”
“Jesus Christ!” I let go of her and turn around in a circle for no reason. “I fucked up! OK? I fucked up. I was in a very, very bad place. The magazine was hemorrhaging money and I was kind of scapegoating and I might have gone a little crazy and—”
“Might?”
“Whatever. Listen, honestly, I’ve apologized in every way I know how. I feel like I’ve kind of gone well beyond what most would consider the normal scope of a reasonable apology. And I’ve, I think, really illustrated my commitment to make things right between us. Myrtle Astrid Rothschild… you are one of the best people I know, you are one of the finest people I’ve ever met, you are one of my favorite humans of any persuasion, and at this point, I don’t know what more I could do to show you that other than chop my own dick off. Which I really, really don’t want to do. But I will if... No. Sorry. That’s a lie. I won’t chop my dick off. That’s where I draw th
e line. So, if you need that... Fuck you. But my point is, I’m sorry. And you look amazing tonight. And I feel like I did earn a reward. And whether you believe it or not, I think you deserve one too, and also whether you believe it or not, I feel like what I want to do to you right now could serve as one, and even though I’m not entirely sure what I’m saying makes sense because this whole thing has me super fucked up, I think you get the point I’m making because I kind of feel like you also understand me better than anyone. So…”
Had I known I was going to be making word salad, I would’ve brought dressing.
Jesus. That was… I have no idea what she’ll make of that, so I decide to just shut up and wait to find out.
Her highly bodiced bosom is heaving. She swallows. Her eyes are rimmed with wet. She tightens her jaw. Her chin shakes.
I watch. My eyes dart to the photos on the walls. A strange imagining of her over the course of her life whizzes through my mind. I don’t know if it’s accurate, but it’s vivid. “What?” I ask, with the caution one would use when attempting to tame a wild lion.
“You…” She stops herself. Swallows again.
“Yeah…?”
“You...”
“Me... What? Her head shakes back and forth slowly. “You… you actually remembered my middle name?”
Huh. That was not where I thought that was going. “Uh. Yeah. I guess I did.”
And before I can say more, she’s on top of me.
She jumps right into my arms and I grab her under her ass to hold her there. I keep her lifted with one arm and with the other, I grab the nest of black hair she has pinned to the top of her head. I force her mouth onto mine and my tongue gallops inside.
She allows me to lick her up. Our lips wrestle and our tongues joust. I open one eye long enough to spy the Persian rug in the adjoining room, next to the entry hall, and begin walking us in that direction. Her hands paw along my top coat. Paw seems like the appropriate word.
Once we’re onto the rug, I loosen my hands and allow her long legs to land on the floor. I don’t let go of her with my mouth as I strip both my overcoat and my suitcoat off, and she helps me push them off my shoulders and down my arms. It’s dark in here, but the candlelight from the hurricanes she has lit in the foyer cast us in a half-glow, and the shadows dancing across her face make her appear as some sort of half-cherub, half-devil. In other words, the perfect creature for someone like me.
She reaches for the buttons on my vest and I go for the satin ties on her corset at the same time. We are fumbling and clumsy, our eagerness making us frantic. I jerk at the knots in the ribbons that I think will cause her body to fall free of its captivity, but it must be some kind of… It’s not a slip knot, because it doesn’t slip. So it... I can’t... It seems to just be... I think it’s getting tighter, so… maybe if I just…
She gasps in an, “Oh, shit,” as the tight satin cinches her harder, causing her to have to suck in her ribs.
“Fuck. What? What did I do?” I go to try to rectify whatever I just caused to go wrong, but she waves me off.
“No, no,” she chokes out. “It’s not… hold on.”
She fiddles with the knot that I drew in, trying to get it unwound. She kind of slaps at her stomach as if she can maybe knock it off.
“Seriously, let me help,” I say, coming toward her.
She waves me off again and turns to head to a writing desk. There’s an antique letter opener. She snatches it up, slices at the ribbons, and cuts them loose. She gulps in a breath and releases it on an exhale as the satin binders fall loose and limp and hang unceremoniously from her torso.
“They’re just… they’re ornamental,” she says. And then, to illustrate the point, she pops a snap in the front which opens the top a fraction, allowing the smooth flesh of her breasts to spill forward a bit. Which is distractingly pleasant.
“Shit. I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s OK.”
“I hope that wasn’t like, your favorite outfit or anything.”
“I mean… it was.”
“Oh.”
“And it was designed by maybe the most famous dungeonwear designer in the world.”
“Oh.”
“But, y’know… no big.”
Fuck me. “Fuck me. I’m sorry. Tell me her name, I’ll have her make you ten more.”
“His name.”
“His?”
“Yeah. He was a he.”
“Was?”
“He died last year.”
For fuck’s sake. “For fuck’s sake. I’m sorry… um… how’d he die?”
“Auto-erotic asphyxiation. Which is probably an occupational hazard.”
I don’t know if she knows she’s making a joke, and I know I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. I start laughing. Hard.
“Stop!” she says. But then she starts laughing too. “Stop! I’m serious!” She’s not serious. “Stop! It’s not funny!” It is funny.
“OK, OK,” I say, slowing my laugh down. “OK. But I am sorry. Shit. That was ridiculous.”
“Yeah.”
“It feels kind of like… Know what it’s like?”
“What?”
Andrew told me a story about when he and Eden first—”
“Eh, eh, eh. No thanks. I don’t need to hear about what your friend and my friend do when they’re… whatever.”
I nod. Put my hands up. Bow my head. “So. Uh. What now?”
“What now?”
“Yeah.”
She nibbles at her bottom lip and says, “Well… you did earn a reward.”
I smile. “Yeah, I guess I did, right?”
“So…” She walks over to me and starts backing me up.
“What’re you…?” She pushes me in reverse until my knees hit a tufted leather accent chair and I fall into the seat. “What’re you doing?”
“I don’t know. Slowing this down.”
“Why?” I say, starting to stand.
“Because,” she says, pushing me back down. “Because I know what I’ll be getting, but you don’t yet.”
I squint. “Whaaaaaat does that mean?”
She shrugs. “Just means I’ve seen what you’re working with. You haven’t had the same insight. You should make sure this”—she gestures down her body—“is something you really want.”
“Why wouldn’t it be? Myrtle?” Suddenly, I have a horrible feeling that she might be trying to tell me… “I hope you don’t… I don’t wanna offend, but—”
“I’m not a hermaphrodite.”
“Oh, good. OK. Great! I mean, I didn’t think so, but—”
“Shut up, Pierce.”
“You got it.”
I do. I shut up and I let her have control. In a very different way though. A very different way than I have been these last days.
Now, I simply give over to the fact that she wants to bare herself to me. That she wants me to sit here in my shirt and tie while she strips down in front of me. That’s what she’s asking for. She’s telling me to let her expose herself to me and in so doing reassert her dominance.
Not over me.
But over herself.
Or maybe she just knows she’s got a rockin’ bod and wants to show it off.
Either way, we both get something we want right now, so I’m good.
She picks up where she left off, unbuttoning the rest of her gorgeous and violated corset. Each snap that she pops open drops loose the strands of creamy satin and replaces it with more and more and more and more of her creamy, creamy skin, until…
The corset falls to the floor.
Heels. Thin, silky, cream-colored stockings. Creamy, white panties. Silver garters snapped onto a matching garter belt. And above that…
Her.
Her naked, lean torso. The breasts that I have seen for the last seven years, always on display underneath blouses and dresses, occasionally peeking out from behind their shroud, occasionally not, now on full display. Oh, mon Dieu, she is… she is a sight to
behold.
The tiara is still squarely planted on top of her head and the black tendrils falling around her cheeks frame her face as though it were a Renaissance painting.
Candlelight flickers around us still.
My cock stiffens in my suit pants. I rest my elbow on the arm of the tall leather chair and rub my palm down my face. When it falls away and I open my eyes, she is still there.
She says nothing. Just stares at me intensely with unblinking eyes as she unfastens the garters from her stockings and they snap against her legs.
She slides her heels off and, in stockinged feet, she saunters toward me. I squirm in the chair. My dick is kind of stuck in between my thighs. I just need to pop it loose… To shift... So... OK. Good. There it goes.
She lands in front of me and straddles my knees. I look up at her, awaiting instructions on what she would like. This isn’t a game, and there are no rules now, but I am happy to submit to whatever she asks in this moment.
Unless she wants my cock in a tiny box. Then I draw a line. But that doesn’t feel like what this is. So…
She reaches out and takes my hands. She places them on the outside of her thighs, right along the waistband of her underwear. I continue to stare into her face. She nods, subtly, and I oblige by sliding my hands down, dragging the delicate fabric with me as I do.
My breath is heavy. My heart is beating faster than I’m used to. I pause and look back up at her one last time. Her expression doesn’t change.
And then I draw the covering down to her ankles, she steps out, and I find myself facing…
I look up at her one more time and she smiles a mischievous smile.
When I told Andrew that I was going to Pierce her, it was a play on words. A joke.
I had no idea that it would be literal and that someone had already beaten me to it.
I swallow. “Wow,” I say.
She shrugs. I stand, keeping my hands on her hips.
“Does, uh,” I start. “Does that stay in when…?”
“It can,” she says.
“And does it make it feel…?”
“Like nothing you’ve ever experienced.”
I gulp. I suck at my teeth. I nod. “Well. That is, uh… that’s pretty cool.”
I lift one hand up to her neck to draw her in for a kiss as my other hand stays down by her crotch, presumably trying to decide if it’s brave enough to attempt to touch the impressive-looking silver ring that’s down there.